Thomas Pynchon: what art can learn from the great pop author

Pynchon's art and genius is to absorb modern life and turn it into joyous fantasy. Visual artists would do well to copy him

The 1960s produced many pop artists and one great pop novelist. The fiction of Thomas Pynchon is not pop in the sense of popular he's fairly "difficult" but in the true sense of pop art, in that it takes its images, language and references directly from the big, bad, modern world around it.

Today, Pynchon is one of the most important creative figures on the planet. Still pumping out formidable and monstrously contemporary fiction his latest novel Bleeding Edge deals in an engrossing, hilarious and shocking way with the Deep Web, video games and 9/11 he not only disproves all those pessimists who fear literary novels are doomed in the digital age but points a way forward for serious practitioners of all the arts not least for visual artists.

Continue reading...